


Shit Just Got Real

by PaintingWithWords (paint_with_words)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reality Show, April Fools' Day, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Crack, Don’t copy to another site, Drunk Katsuki Yuuri, Established Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Established Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky, Gen, M/M, Married Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Other, Sorry Not Sorry, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, Thirsty Phichit Chulanont, Zamboni Roulette 2019, everyone is extra, rickroll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 15:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18317957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paint_with_words/pseuds/PaintingWithWords
Summary: When one of his sponsors had first run the idea by him at the banquet after the Grand Prix a few months ago, Phichit had been more than a little skeptical.  Share a house with nine other skaters for three months for a reality television show?  God, sharing space with skaters at Pyeongchang for two weeks had been hard enough and there he’d had his own room.  Doing it for reality television sounded like being stuck in a special kind of hell.  He’d politely declined.When Yuuri found out, he’d drunkenly draped himself across Phichit and begged him to join.“You wanna be an… an… an influencer, right?” Yuuri had said, hanging all over him in a desperate effort to remain standing.  “Well, this would help.  Reality television is definitely th’ way t’ go.  Vitya an’ I are gonna do it an’ it would be nice t’ have you there too.”What finally sealed the deal for him was finding out that Chris had signed up.Three months living in close quarters with one of the most gorgeous men ever to grace the planet, who took every opportunity to shamelessly flirt with him and actually made ice skating look like foreplay?  In the space of a heartbeat,Hell nohad becomeYes please.





	Shit Just Got Real

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ICanSeeClearlyNow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ICanSeeClearlyNow/gifts).



> Here, have some crack for April Fools'. This is part of the Zamboni Roulette 2019 Exchange & this is for [ICanSeeClearlyNow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ICanSeeClearlyNow/pseuds/ICanSeeClearlyNow). Her prompt was a dislike of getting up early and I drew reality television show. 
> 
> As Sam Beckett would say, oh boy.
> 
> Don't say I didn't warn you. ;-)

Yuuri got out of the van and followed the other skaters into the house, keenly aware of the cameraman following them and doing his best to ignore him.  The first day of practice at the rink with everyone had gone better than he’d expected, but he was tired and ready to head to the room he shared with Viktor and have a nap.  He’d had to get up even earlier than he’d expected just to get a shower and he was worn out.  But that was life when you were sharing a house with nine other people on a reality television series.

Viktor had talked him into it, saying it would be good for his career.  “They want to help make figure skating more popular,” he’d crooned as they curled up in a corner with a bottle of champagne at the last Grand Prix banquet.  “It would increase your fan base _sooo_ much darling, and it’s only for three months.  We can do that, can’t we?”

They had signed the contract and Chris had brought out the pole to celebrate… and Yuuri didn’t remember much of what had happened after that, but he’d seen the pictures…

Yuuri shook his head and settled down on the couch, grateful when Viktor brought him a bottle of cold water from the refrigerator.  He’d just laid his head on Viktor’s shoulder when Yuri came storming out of the wing of the house where all the bedrooms were, his long blond hair flying about his head like Medusa’s snakes.

“BEKA!” he shrieked, making everyone wince, “they switched out the beds while we were gone!  They gave us BUNK BEDS!”

Yuuri sat up, his eyes narrowing in anger.  Bunk beds?!  Oh, they better not have-

“Did they do that in all the rooms?” Viktor asked, ready to get up and go see for himself.

“I don’t know, old man,” Yuri shot back.  “I didn’t look in all the rooms!  I only looked in ours and they fucked it up!”

Yuuri pursed his lips.  It was bad enough that they’d tried to assign him to a room with Mickey when they got there yesterday.  To add insult to injury, they’d given them all twin beds.  Viktor had traded with Mickey and they had promptly shoved the beds together, but Yuuri had been upset.  He was a _married man_ , for fuck’s sake.  He deserved a room with his husband and their dog and they deserved a decently-sized bed, not this… this… fake drama.

Otabek apologized to Georgi and Emil and headed towards the back of the house, following Yuri to their room, Viktor right behind them.  Yuuri sat up and headed after them.

Another cameraman was already there, his camera trained on their room, ready to catch their reactions.

Viktor got there first and sighed.  Yuuri peeked into the room and saw that their little love nest had been destroyed.  Their beds had been removed and replaced with bunk beds.

Damn.  This was bullshit.

Viktor walked into the room in front of him and gently shooed Makkachin off the bottom bunk.  Yuuri looked at his husband and read the quiet anger there.  He took Viktor’s hand and squeezed it.

“Let’s fix this,” Yuuri said.

Together, they hauled the mattresses off the frame and slid them into the opposite corner, one next to the other.  When they were done, Viktor turned to the cameraman, who had come into the room to record their actions, and gave him his best fake smile.

“You know, you have a married couple here,” he said.  “Don’t you think you’ll get better footage for your show if you give us a proper bed?”

The cameraman said nothing, but he smiled.  They could all hear Yuri across the hall in the room he shared with Otabek, screeching in loud, angry Russian about how this was all bullshit.

“Now,” Viktor said, walking towards the cameraman and forcing him to back up into the hall, “if you don’t mind, my husband is tired and needs to get some rest.”  The cameraman was in the doorway, trying to stay inside, but Viktor was relentless and kept walking forward until the man had to back up into the hallway.

“Go away,” Viktor said as he closed the door on the camera, clearly done with him.  Yuuri wished they could lock it, but only the doors to the bathrooms had locks.  Ah, but there was a way to keep them out…  Yuuri grabbed the chair in front of the small desk and shoved it under the doorknob, barring entry.  Now no one could get in until they removed it.

Sighing, Viktor took Yuuri in his arms and guided him to the mattresses on the floor.  They were halfway undressed when Yuuri said, “We should keep it down.  It’s the middle of the day. People will hear us.”

Viktor smirked and kissed him.

“No one’s going to hear anything,” he replied, his hands slipping inside Yuuri’s boxer briefs.  “Yura’s still throwing a fit out there.  We can be as loud as we want.”

Yuuri laughed and pulled Viktor closer.

“Then let’s make some noise,” he said. 

While they were at the rink the next day, the twin mattresses were removed, replaced with a proper queen-sized bed.  The chair had also been replaced with one they couldn't jam under the doorknob.  And Phichit informed Yuuri that all the bedrooms had at least three hidden cameras.

Yuuri blushed and his his face in his hands.  When would their time here be up again?

 

* * *

 

 

Phichit walked across the concrete patio, headed for the chaise lounge closest to the pool, breakfast smoothie and phone in hand.  It was barely light outside and he hated getting up at practically the asscrack of dawn, but it was the only way he could get any peace and quiet in this damn house. 

He kept his expression carefully neutral and sipped his smoothie before he set it on the table.  He didn’t want the cameraman shadowing him to capture him frowning again.  The producers would just use it to create more false drama for the show and Phichit had already had enough of that.  There was plenty of real drama without people needlessly creating more of it.  Sighing, Phichit lowered his sunglasses and began scrolling through his social media feeds to check on the latest developments.

When one of his sponsors had first run the idea by him at the banquet after the Grand Prix a few months ago, he’d been more than a little skeptical.  Share a house with nine other skaters for three months for a reality television show?  God, sharing space with skaters at Pyeongchang for two weeks had been hard enough and there he’d had his own room.  Doing it for reality television sounded like being stuck in a special kind of hell.  He’d politely declined.

When Yuuri found out, he’d drunkenly draped himself across Phichit and begged him to join.

“You wanna be an… an… an influencer, right?” Yuuri had said, hanging all over him in a desperate effort to remain standing.  “Well, this would help.  Reality television is definitely th’ way t’ go.  Vitya an’ I are gonna do it an’ it would be nice t’ have you there too.”

He’d affectionately patted Yuuri on the head, taken him back to his husband, and plopped him down in Viktor’s lap.  He loved Yuuri like the brother he never had, but he was a handful when he was drunk.  And yes, Yuuri was right, being a reality television star would definitely boost his fledgling career as a social media influencer, but relocating for three months and sharing a house with nine other figure skaters?  He still wasn’t sure.

What finally sealed the deal for him was finding out that Chris had signed up.

Suddenly, everything that had been a negative was a positive.  Three months living in close quarters with one of the most gorgeous men ever to grace the planet?   A man who took every opportunity to shamelessly flirt with him?  A man who actually made ice skating look like foreplay?  In the space of a heartbeat, _Hell no_ had become _Yes please_.  He’d never signed a contract so fast before in his life.

But now that they were all in the house, Phichit wasn’t so sure about what he’d done.  Oh, living with everyone definitely had its high points- like seeing how little Chris would walk around in, for one- but it presented plenty of problems, too.  Despite the fact that the house they were in was a gorgeous three-story mansion with what should have been plenty of room for everyone, there never seemed to be any privacy.  There was always someone around, no matter where he went.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, having cameramen follow his every move had gotten old pretty quick.  He’d complained about it once a few days after they’d all moved in.  They’d been sitting down for a group dinner- all of which was recorded, or course- when he’d bemoaned his fate.

“Having all these camera people around all the time feels so intrusive,” he’d muttered over his salad.  “It’s like we’re members of some K-pop group or something.”

Seung-gil had given him a sideways glance and frowned.

“Oh please,” he’d scoffed.  “You may know how to put on perfect winged eyeliner, but you’re not cute enough to be in a K-pop group.”

Before Phichit had been able to clap back, Yuri had snorted, amused at the shade Seung-gil had thrown his way.  Without missing a beat, Seung-gil looked up at Yuri and muttered, “You’re not cute enough, either.  You call yourself the ‘Ice Tiger’, but it’s really more like ‘Snow Cone Kitten’.  None of you are cute enough to be in a K-pop group.”

Dinner had devolved into a huge argument.  Viktor had been angry that Seung-gil would dare say that his husband wasn’t cute enough because Yuuri was fucking adorable, Yuuri had said that Viktor was so beautiful that he would outshine all the others in the group, and Yuri had hissed across the table at Seung-gil like an angry cat.  Emil tried to play peacemaker and got told to fuck off by multiple people in multiple languages for his efforts.  Mickey got in Seung-gil’s face and went off about him always being rude.  Georgi looked up from his constant texting back and forth with his new girlfriend and stared at everyone in stunned silence.  Chris rolled his eyes, said he was too mature for all this infantile bickering, and got up and left.  Out of all of them, Otabek was the only one who looked unphased by everything: while his boyfriend tried to start a literal catfight with Seung-gil, he sat there eating dinner and checking his phone like this was completely normal.

The way things had been edited and remixed made it look so much worse than it really was.  Oh, all the insults were still there, but compressed into forty-five seconds instead of five minutes.  To make matters worse, the producers used a lot of zoom shots to amp up the drama and managed to capture everyone’s worst side.  It looked like a bloodbath.

Phichit had been livid.  He was used to having complete control over the way his image was presented in social media.  These people made them all look like a bunch of bitchy drama queens.  He was afraid that his carefully cultivated image on social media was being ruined by bad tempers and overly-dramatic editing. 

But his loyal followers on Instagram had risen to his defense, saying he was too good and pure for this world while they mercilessly ripped into Seung-gil and his fans, who of course responded in kind.  For two whole stressful days, Phichit’s social media feeds had looked like political fights on Facebook.  It gave him a headache.

But... he had gained followers as a result. _Lots_ of followers.  They all had.  So, had it really been so bad? 

Yes.  Yes, it had.  The fighting never ended.  Hell, even Emil had snapped the other day, telling Mickey to grow up and grow a pair.  He couldn’t wait to get out of here and go home.

He heard the sliding glass door open and he sighed.  Damn, he really didn’t want to be around anyone right now.  He kept his head down and kept his eyes focused on his phone.  Maybe if he ignored whoever it was, they’d ignore him, too.

“Good morning, Phichit,” Chris purred, coming to stand in front of him in a robe that barely covered anything.  Phichit was grateful for the sunglasses: he could ogle Chris without him knowing.  He nodded and swallowed. 

“You’re up early,” Chris said.  Phichit nodded again, letting his phone fall against his chest.

“It’s the only way to get any time to yourself,” he said.  Chris’ glowing smile slipped a little. 

“Did you want some time alone?” he asked.  Phichit shook his head.

“No, you’re good,” he replied.  “I don’t mind spending time with you.”  As soon as the words came out, Phichit inwardly cringed.  Did that sound like a come on?  Was it too obvious?  But Chris clearly didn’t mind: the smile returned as he toyed with the opening of his robe.

“I was going to do a little skinny dipping,” Chris purred, taking a seat on the chaise next to Phichit’s. 

 _Thank you, God_ , Phichit thought.  This must be a reward for having been good in a past life.  But he needed to play it cool…

“Oh, go right ahead,” Phichit said casually.  “I’m not stopping you.”

Chris winked and let his robe fall to the ground.  It was all Phichit could do to keep from licking his lips at the sight.  Chris was like a bronzed god, beautiful and muscular and nude right in front of him.

Phichit knew Chris waxed.  He didn’t know until that moment that he waxed everything.  He took another sip from his glass, his mouth suddenly gone dry and the front of his bathing suit getting a little too tight.

Chris smiled at him, that sexy, knowing smile that melted the hearts of millions, and held out his phone to him.

“Would you take pictures for me?” he asked, the very picture of innocence.

“Of course,” Phichit said, taking his phone and setting it down on the table.  “Mind if I use my own?”

“Go right ahead,” he replied, turning and heading for the pool. 

Phichit snapped a few pictures as Chris got into the water and sighed.  That eggplant emoji was going to get a lot of use today.  A whole lot.  He was painfully aware of the cameras on both of them, recording their every move.  Well, if they were going to give them a show, might as well make it good. 

He put his phone down next to Chris’, then stood up and shoved his swim trunks off in one smooth motion.  Chris looked up at him from the pool, wet and glistening in the morning sunlight, and gave him an appreciative smile.

“Care for some company?” Phichit asked as he got into the water.

He hoped their time in this house would never end.

 

* * *

 

Emil stepped out on the ice, ready to skate his exhibition program for the cheering crowd.  Finally, they were at the end of this stupid reality television program.  All the bickering had gotten to him.  Makkachin and Hana were always barking at one another and Phichit had had to hide his hamsters to keep Potya and Bae from stalking them.  He was so done with everyone. 

He lapped the rink, smiling and waving at the fans.  It was hard going on after Mickey, who’d confused the crowd with his choice of music, Starship’s ”[Sara](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32ScTb6_KHg)”.  Seriously?  Didn’t Mickey know that was a breakup song between _lovers_?  That boy was _confused_.  Emil shook it off, skated to the middle of the ice, and took up his position, waiting for the opening notes of “Anastasis” to fill the rink.

But another [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) came on instead, something more upbeat and catchy.  Emil blinked, stunned as he recognized the song that had been used in so many internet pranks.  A gasp went around the rink as the crowd realized it, too.  Emil shot a look towards his coach, who was racing towards the judges in an effort to stop things and get the music corrected.   He could see the other skaters looking at one another in confusion… all of them except for one.  Yuri Plisetsky was pointing at him, doubled over in laughter. 

So, Yuri had managed to switch his music, had he?  Yuri wanted to prank him with an old Rick Astley song?  Fine then.  He could give as good as he got. 

With a wink and a smile, Emil pushed off across the ice, ready to improvise an entire program.

Nobody was going to rickroll him.  He was going to roll with it.

As the lyrics began, he did his best impression of Viktor's earlier program, skating for his husband in the stands.  Only instead of looking at the Japanese Yuuri, Emil looked at the Russian Yuri, batting his eyes and holding out his arms in an expression of longing and desire.  Then he channeled his best Christophe Giacometti, shooting seductive looks at Yuri over his shoulder as he skated away.

The crowd, and the other skaters, loved it.  They had as much fun with it as he did.  All except for Yuri.  He looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up. 

At the end of the song, Emil came to the center of the ice and held out his hand for Yuri, just like Yuuri did for Viktor at the end of his program.

The crowd roared, littering the ice with flowers and plushies.  All of the other skaters stood and applauded.  There was no score to announce, since it was just an exhibition skate, but it was clear to him that he’d won a lot of fans that day.

Later that night, Emil checked YouTube and was shocked to see how many hits his improvised routine had garnered.  In just a few short hours, his followers on Instagram had quadrupled.  His star was finally rising, all thanks to a prank, and he was never gonna give it up.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments, kudos, and shares all always very much appreciated!
> 
> [AntaresPromise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntaresPromise/pseuds/AntaresPromise) named Seung-gil's dog "Hana", so credit for that goes to her. Thank you very much for letting me use it!
> 
> Oh, and sorry for the rickroll. ;-) BTW, a little piece of useless 80s trivia for you: the singer on the Starship song? His name is “[Mickey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Thomas_\(singer\)%20rel=).


End file.
